Roman Catholic Church

Press Release: Hopes and Expectations of Young LGBT People Towards the Youth Synod

The 37th Annual Conference of the European Forum of LGBT Christian Groups, organised by Cammini di Speranza and REFO (Evangelical Network Faith and Homosexuality), took place in Albano Laziale, near Rome, 9 to 13 May 2018. On 12 May, the Conference included an event specifically for young LGBT+ people to provide input to the Youth Synod organised by the Roman Catholic Church, to find possible ways to reach a state of inclusive pastoral care.

A number of organisations and advocates who focus on pastoral care and social justice for LGBT people and their families, working to form a Global Network of Rainbow Catholics (GNRC), is disappointed by the 14th Ordinary Synod of Bishops’ Working Document (Instrumentum Laboris) on “The Vocation & Mission of the Family in the Church and Contemporary World”, published on 23 June 2015.

LGBT Christians From All Over the World Gather in Rome

Through the international theological conference Ways of love, for a pastoral care with homosexual and trans people we wish to help the Extraordinary Synod on the family reflect on welcoming LGBT people. The conference takes place on October 3th, 2014.

A Welcoming Pastoral Approach to Homosexual and Trans People

Some proposals for the Synod of bishops

As an integral part of the conference Ways of love, for a pastoral care with homosexual and trans people that took place in Rome on october 3thrd 2014, a document was read that summarizes the appeal that the Organizing Committee of the Third Italian Forum of LGBT Christians sent to the Italian participants to the Synod and to the secretariat of the Synod as a contribution to the work of the Synod itself. The paper was drawn up by a working collective over several months, starting from the responses made by Italian LGBT Christian groups to the questionnaire distributed last year.This is a short version of the paper with a link to the whole paper.

The Ways of Love

The Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of bishops in October 2014 offers Italian homosexual Christians the opportunity to accomplish a Copernican revolution: there will be a shift from a situation where the outcasts and the hidden were hoping and waiting for something to happen, for someone to change their pain, to one where hope becomes action and they refuse to be closeted because they are aware that their lives are as worthy and full as anyone else’s life.Their testimonies can bring all sorts of communities to reflect together so that at the Synod a new pastoral care is conceived ‘with’ homosexuals and transexuals.